Press Room

This year’s 31 Master of Fine Arts (MFA) candidates of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University have lived throughout the world (six countries, 19 states and two Caribbean islands). They’ve played professional tennis, recited slam poetry, and pirouetted in a tutu, as well as acted classically, comedically and experimentally. But all have chosen to spend the last three years in New York City, two express subway stops from Broadway … following their dream and refining their craft as actors, directors or playwrights in the only Masters’ theater program endorsed by the renowned Actors Studio.

The death of a father, medical ethics, a drag queen, family secrets, mental illness, love, an honest detective and a family caught up in a hurricane (both internal conflicts AND the weather) are the themes resonating in the MFA playwrights’ staged reading series presented by the acclaimed Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University during the weekends of February 27 and 28 and March 6 and 7.

When the curtain goes up on Shakespeare’s Globe company’s performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost on December 8 at Pace University, it will mark the company’s first New York appearance since the sold-out tour of Merry Wives of Windsor in 2005. Now directed by Dominic Dromgoole, who succeeded Mark Rylance in 2003 as Artistic Director, Love’s Labour’s Lost will be completing a two-month national tour with performances through Monday evening, December 21. Opening Night is Thursday, December 10th at 8pm. Both the 2005 and 2009 tours were produced by John Luckacovic and Eleanor Oldham of 2Luck Concepts.

To highlight the neglected Native American “view from the shore,” Pace University has commissioned a dramatization of the early encounters that conveys feelings on both sides.

Avid viewers of James Lipton’s “Inside the Actors Studio,” seen in 89 million US homes and 125 countries, know that the young people in the first few rows are advanced students in what is really a seminar on the craft of theater, held in one of the world’s most famous drama schools – the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University.

Sophomore Victoria Pompilus (Mount Vernon, NY/Mount Vernon) is set to perform on the “big stage” at Amateur Night at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater on Wednesday March 4 at 7:30 pm. A psychology major at Pace University, Pompilus is also a member of the Setter women’s volleyball team. Pompilus will be blogging about her experience at the Apollo at http://www.dysoncollege.blogspot.com.

Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America, together with Columbia Productions, will present the New York debut of Beijing People’s Art Theater, arguably the most famous professional theatre company in China, in the play which is the cornerstone of its repertory, “Teahouse” by Lao She. The production will be November 27 to December 1 at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, 3 Spruce Street, (across the street from City Hall). The play will be performed in Mandarin Chinese with both English subtitles and simultaneous English translation through headphones.

Westchester’s premiere professional theatre now in residence on Pace University’s Briarcliff campus at Woodward Hall Theatre, is proud to present
the Fall Mainstage production: the Westchester premiere of David Lindsay Abaire’s hilarious, heartrending and haunting play KIMBERLY AKIMBO, directed by Richard Caliban. The absurdly funny story of a teenage girl whose body ages four times faster than those around her.

Details of the culmination of the Beijing People’s Arts Theater’s first U.S. tour, which begins this month at Washington’s Kennedy Center and ends at the Michael Schimmel Center. From November 27 to December 1 the company will present its signature “drama theater” work, Lao She’s “The Teahouse.”

The Hudson Stage Company, the adventurous professional theater company that has performed in a variety of Westchester venues during its first six years, is becoming an Artist-In-Residence at the Briarcliff annex to Pace University’s Pleasantville campus.